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04 December 2014

Editor's Note: I am delighted to invite you all to a selling exhibition of Harry's famous collection of vintage and antique Christmas tree stands, opening December 11 through December 23. They will be displayed in the most gemutlich of settings, the Philip Colleck historic townhouse on East 58th Street. This is one of Eerdmans Fine Art's first ventures - I so hope to see you there!
By Harry Heissmann

The days after
Christmas, particularly January 6, which is when most people dispose of their
Christmas tree, are sad days for me. I’m not sure why I
get so nostalgic, but the piles of dead trees, most of them dry and with lots
of needles on the ground is just such a pitiful sight.

When I moved to the
United States in 1995, I learned that many people put their tree on the
sidewalk with the stand still attached, as they will just buy a new one with
the tree for the next year. This would of course
not have happened in 19th Century Germany, when the novelty cast
iron Christmas tree stands were very expensive and could only be bought by
wealthy families. The first model the company Roedinghausen cast was offered in
1866. At the turn of the century a cast iron Christmas tree stand would cost
the same amount you had to pay for a whole box of Christmas ornaments. The stands became
family heirlooms and would be kept in the attic or the basement to be used
again and again. Today, recycling being so important, there are services
offered to have your discarded tree transformed to mulch but few keep the
stand – usually a red and green metal or plastic model of unspecific design.

To me it is most
fascinating to imagine the families delighted by the tree stands and of course
much more importantly – the actual Christmas tree. The trees were mostly
table top trees and times were apparently much different, as ornament was used
on everything that was made, even on the Christmas tree stands.

Their origin,
however, is of course much simpler. The earliest mention
of a decorated Christmas tree is in a handwritten document from 1604. The
decoration was of paper roses and ‘wafers’(?) and a wooden square is mentioned
for the attachment. Maybe it was a hole in a square piece of wood or one of the
wooden fences which became fashionable later on. But the earliest stands
definitely were made from wood, such as the wooden ‘crosses’ even still around
today. Sometimes buckets
were filled with wet sand and even ‘futterrueben’ were used in more rural areas
in Austria or Northern Germany especially after the Second World War.

This stand features wonderful vignettes of ‘modes of transportation’, a car, a sailboat, a train and most importantly a blimp, or ‘Zeppelin’, as well as a toy soldier, a doll and a snowman, etc. Original paint, accented in gold and silver, original screws.

02 December 2014

"I don't want to hear one more word about that sale," said my friend's partner upon hearing our topic of conversation. Indeed the Bunny Mellon auction is STILL a subject of conversation - mainly what we didn't win - and has unleashed a passion in many of us for ceramic vegetables and painted fauteuils (a market on which Mrs. Mellon seemed to have a monopoly).

If you viewed the sale, you couldn't have missed the ginormous five-tier etagere arranged with all manner of porcelain cabbage, asparagus, and lettuce, faithfully replicating how it was in her Virginia house*, as seen above.

One of the many interesting things about Mrs. Mellon is that even though she could have lived in the most ducal surroundings, she preferred things rustic and light. She wasn't afraid to paint a bronze Giacometti white or let it rust out in the garden, and she didn't think twice about whopping off the Chippendale Gothic cresting...

of that etagere, which she purchased from Colefax and Fowler, as seen in this 1964 photo that John Fowler sent Mario Buatta.

* Not the Georgian style red brick house her husband built with his first wife. Apparently it was too formal and stiff for the 2nd Mrs. Mellon who used it instead as a walk-in closet.